ASH welcomes the MHRA’s decision not to follow the lead of a growing number of other countries and ban e-cigarettes, but to regulate them instead.

MHRA regulation can ensure that adult smokers can continue to be able to buy e-cigarettes as easily as tobacco, but promotion to children or non-smokers will be prohibited.

Smokers are increasingly choosing to use e-cigarettes. ASH estimates that around 1.3 million smokers and ex-smokers were current users in Spring 2013.

Some of the e-cigarette companies are complaining that their products will have to meet medicines standards for efficacy and safety, but for smokers to be confident about the quality of the products they’re buying such regulation is essential.

Jeremy Mean, the MHRA’s manager of vigilance and risk management of medicines, said:

Reducing the harms of smoking to smokers and those around them is a key Government health priority.

Our research has shown that existing electronic cigarettes and other nicotine containing products on the market are not good enough to meet this public health priority.

Some NCPs are already licensed and the Government's decision to work towards medicines licensing for all these products is designed to deliver quality products that will support smokers to cut down and to quit.

The decision announced today provides a framework that will enable good quality products to be widely available.

It’s not about banning products that some people find useful, it’s about making sure that smokers have an effective alternative that they can rely on to meet their needs.